Methodists

A name given (1729) by a student of Christ Church to the
brothers Wesley and their friends, who used to assemble on given
evenings for religious conversation.

This word was in use many centuries before the birth of Wesley and
of Whitfield. Gale (1678) speaks of a religious sect called “the New
Methodists” (Court of the Gentiles. John Spencer uses the word
as one familiarly known in Cromwell's time. Even before the birth of
Christ, Celsus tells us that those physicians were called “Methodists”
(methodici who followed medical rules rather than
experience. Modern Methodism dates no farther back than 1729.